Degrees of Separation
by Absardea
Summary: Reckless and broken, Riku's arrival shatters Sora's dull, small-town life - and the dreams begin... In reverse, Leon and Cloud reflect upon one hot summer which changed everything. [ AU, YAOI, suicide. RSK, RLC.]
1. P, Decay

(Covering the whole of this fanfic- _Kingdom Hearts _belongs to Square-Enix. I don't own the rights, just a copy. Not the characters, either. Not even Cloud. But damnit, you know I'd like to.)

There's practically no yaoi in this prologue-thingummy, but this _is _a shounen-ai story, and the R rating will be justified in later chapters. First half Sora and Kairi, second Leon and Cloud.

**Degrees of Separation**

Sora could remember something somebody had told him long ago, how dancing was a little like fucking the music, and he'd never really thought about it until then. He felt awfully small, pressed into the corner, wishing he could be a part of that writhing mass of heat and music. It was scary, their effortless synchrony. Beautiful and ageless. Hell, they probably didn't even exist in the daytime.  
  
He felt invisible, too. Not one person had acknowldged their presence the entire time. Not even a glance or raised eyebrow or sneer. _Stupid kids_. That would have been ok. At least a confirmation that they'd made it, a story to tell come Monday morning. But all there was was complete insignificance and Kairi tugging at his shirt sleeve. Her lips were moving without words, just spewing the beat. Sora stepped closer to her. As ever, one strand of hair drifted forwards when she leant into him. It brushed his face. He felt her words rather than hearing them.  
  
"I think I want to go, now."  
  
If he looked stupid, he knew Kairi looked a whole lot worse. An hour previously, and waiting on his lawn, he'd figured her innocent, familiar, petite. Now she just looked like a little girl playing jaded, childish, and way, way out of depth. She kept adjusting the back of her skirt and wiping away gloss on her palm, yawning to the side. It was a little pathetic, but Sora wasn't about to protest. He hadn't exactly been having the time of his life.  
  
"So I'll take you home."  
  
She flashed him one of those genuine smiles, the kind Sora had loved for over a decade, and took his hand. He lapped in some air and began to weave them across the floor, wishing he was taller for about the hundreth time that night. This was their no-man's land. Bodies twisted into their path and hands lazily swept their figures. Anything against the mass. _Get out of here_.  
  
Sora was on the second step when he turned. Kairi had tucked her hands around his jean hooks. The lights were beginning to change, rainbow erray to a blue pulse, strobes spinning too fast to focus upon anything, just flashes of hair and lips and arms. He wanted to fix this picture, because he wasn't planning on ever coming back. The sprayed caricatures on the walls seemed to be dancing, too, the bottles the bar guy was juggling, the mock paper flames circling the dancefloor. Well. That was -  
  
It wasn't movement that caught Sora's eye. More the lack of it.  
  
_Anything against the mass_. He wasn't dancing or struggling in the crowd, just wandering through it. His expression was sickeningly calm, like nothing would - had - ever touched it, not even once. The lights meant that shadows flickered from one side of his face to the other, savouring their time, slipping beneath his features; pointed jaw, cupid's bow, ice gaze, metallic fringe. He carried the presence Sora would have loved; the dancers subsided completely to let him by. The room was moving too fast to be sure, but Sora thought the stranger's pupils settled on his own for just one moment longer than a skim.  
  
Kairi squeezed his ass.  
  
Sora took the steps two at a time. For the first time, some lyrics broke the beat and chased them out.  
  
_Don't you wonder what he looks like in the **LIGHT**?_  
  
---  
  
"That guy," Kairi said. "Did you see him watching me?"  
  
She was walking ahead. Her shoes dangled from each hand.  
  
_You?_  
  
"When we were about to leave," she turned back, raised her eyebrows. "You were staring at him. The guy with the grey hair."  
  
"I wasn't _staring _at him."  
  
"But you noticed him, right?"  
  
"I really don't know."  
  
Sora shoved his hands into his pockets and sighed. You could never see any stars in the city. He was cold and dawn was bleeding the horizon, and Kairi was getting thrills about some strange guy who was greying young. Bed was a pretty prospect.  
  
She walked back to where he had stopped and linked his arm. "Some day, we'll laugh about this. The whole night, Decay, everything. We've waited, what, three years to get into that place? And we did."  
  
Sora wished that he could just agree and smile and kiss her, perhaps, but it was difficult. Decay was more than just some club, it had been - _pathetic _- a goal? Something other than renting videos or driving to the beach with Kairi on a Saturday night. His mother couldn't ask him about it and his father couldn't spin it into his future. Sora couldn't help but think that, somehow, if he had gone alone, everything would have been revolutionary and wonderful. Which was stupid. But still.  
  
"You looked great," he said, to make up for the thought.  
  
"I didn't. But thanks for saying it."  
  
She leant some of her weight against him and he wrapped an arm around her bare shoulders. The orange neon made her skin look pale, almost translucent. Her thighs were patchy with the cold. He held her tighter. Such a sucker for the role of protector. Always. That first glimpse of copper in a grey playground. All the other kids had gone inside to get away from the rain. She was drawing faces in the mud with a jagged stone. Sora had watched from the window, wishing he was out there. He could give her his anorak, or something, the way they did in the movies. That memory always made him blush, and he'd never told her, because Kairi didn't take things like that. She'd look puzzled or laugh or just leave his words humiliated and shrinking in the air between.  
  
Her breath warmed his face and he kissed her slowly. She tasted of sweat, the weirdest contrast to the cold of skin.

"It's been such a great summer."

"I know it."

"I still love you," blue eyes slits in the darkness, angled up towards him. Kairi smiling a little uncertainly, brows creased to the centre.

Sora struggled to conceal the flinch. Yeah, his values were plain and old-fashioned. He could always lie. Not that that was his strong point. This was the moment. The end of seven weeks together. Seven weeks of Kairi telling him that and seven weeks of Sora's mind bawling at him to just. Fucking. Lie. And then there was the doubt racking his mind, the insomnia. Was it a lie? And why? And Dr.Pepper commercials and Tidus' smirk(_that one time_); "Well, we always knew Sora was too good... for his own good." This was outside of her house. This was the goodbye.

A silver convertable flashed past, engine entirely devouring expectation. As the breath eased out of him, Sora caught their reflections in the tinted glass.

They looked good together.

* * *

After all of those corridors, the sun faded the world out. Six, seven. It was getting cooler but the shadows were still bold. This was Cloud's favourite part of the day, and he'd always been able to do that, just smile at the little things, despite everything else. His shoes sent up dust clouds when he dragged them the way adults told him not to. _He _was meant to be an adult now, but whatever. The street outside was nearly deserted. A few stragglers were leaving with flowers and tears and Cloud wondered what their stories were(_to forget your own_). He felt sick all of a sudden, and sad. He could fill his head with everything, so much random shit, that was what people said, but in the end, he'd always have to come back to himself.  
  
Leon was sitting on the curb twenty metres away. His posture was relaxed, expression easy, leaning back on his wrists, just waiting. Cloud's smile grew a little bitter. They were both so accustomed to this. Just ignore everything, let it slip away. Perhaps they could just leave, walk home in silence again. A nurse strolled the other way, and Cloud caught her, looking across her face, under her lashes, at that stranger in the leather jacket with the belts and the tan and those eyes. She was thinking about fucking him, probably. People always thought about fucking Leon, when they didn't even know. What he'd just done. All those lives he'd just scattered.  
  
"How long are you going to stand there thinking what to say?"  
  
Leon's voice was flat as usual, but Cloud could hear the dregs of a smile.  
  
"And how long are you going to spend up your own ass before you even look at me?"  
  
Leon shrugged. The smile rose and crossed into profile. "Maybe just a little longer."  
  
He turned around. Even when the world was entirely bleached and dazy, Leon's eyes were the same. There was lilac spreading beneath them, though, the skin there thinner. He looked tired and older than he ever had done before.  
  
_Good. And hate youself for not meaning it._  
  
Cloud heard the entrance door close, that nurse starting her shift. Still thinking leather and belts, probably.  
  
"So, he's not going to die," Cloud said. His imagination, or did Leon flinch a little at that? He stepped forward. The burning in his gut, it was hunger, that was all. Cloud felt as though he hadn't eaten for days, but it couldn't have been more than four hours. They had met at two that afternoon, outside the mall, and laughed at stupid jokes and shared a pizza and stumbled back to Leon's and into bed and and and no premonition whatsoever of this, of blood and that poor kid and-  
  
_Just hungry._  
  
"If you say you don't care, I swear, I'll never look at you again. But just... gods, Leon, say something! That boy in there, that was you."  
  
"Us," said Leon. A car passed them by, and scattered some leaves up. Leon picked one from his hair and held it in his palm, just looked at it. Cloud clenched his fists. A paper-cut twinged in the sweat on his knuckles.  
  
"Fuck you... hey, fuck you, Leon."  
  
Leon did laugh, then. The absurdity of the conversation, Cloud's expression, acting so innocent, so shocked. That this was how it had all turned out, when really, it had been coming all along. There was relief, too, which he eased out of his face(_mask_) with an old, practised nonchalance. The guilt that had been eating him up, alone out here, was seeping away. _He's not going to die_. The brunet stood slowly. One leather boot scraped the pavement. Cloud's head demanded him not to step back, however close Leon sidled up, however their hips touched through denim and leather, however Leon's breath reached his face still smelling of that pizza, eaten when they were both laughing and weightless.  
  
"It's a little late for that, Strife."  
  
The guilt seeping out in Leon's low laughter.  
  
Cloud wanted to smash that cold, detached serenity more than anything. The impersonal use of his surname, like they didn't know one another, like they hadn't been fucking hours before. Back to basics; falling into old habits and coldness. Funny, that this whole mess should occur just when they were getting warmer. Cloud thought that if he were that guy - the one he'd always wanted to grow into - he would probably just let emotion take him and break Leon's jaw aganst the curb. If he were that guy, he wouldn't be standing here in the first place. The sun warmed the right side of his face, and he smiled with a kind of weary disbelief. This was all too big, and it had started so small, months ago, just Leon's eyes and that cold silver kid who had looked so calm, yet must have been dying all along, burning beneath the surface. That silver-haired kid now lying in the hospital behind, in a condition called 'critical but stabilised'. That kid who had physically done it all to himself. Only now did Cloud see how the blame should spread. 

When Leon touched his arm and gestured back to the curb, he didn't think. The men stepped out of the light, beneath the shadows of the elms, and sat back down on the pavement together.

* * *

... hi! First fanfic. Leon and Cloud's parts will move backward in time, _Memento_-style. All will become clearer. And the two halves do have a connection, through my favourite KH character. Hey, got to love Riku! 

Thanks for reading, and if you love it or hate it, please let me know what you think. -Abs


	2. 1, Between Ashes

Yaoi. And if themes of suicide offend you, it may be a good idea to stop reading at Cloud and Leon's half. Um, enjoy!

Thanks – babymar-mar, kimi-sama, Praetor, Uzumaki-sama.

**Degrees of Separation – 1 - Between Ashes**

'_Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.' _- Semisonic

Sora lay in that place. Dream punctured but body too warm to move.

He was back in Decay.

It was so late that it was early, because the club was deserted and the stillness rushed at him, the lights static and all directed into one spotlight on the centre of the dance floor. By the bar, bottles were suspended in the air, ground scattered with cigarette butts and scuffs from steps, slides across the years. If there was music, Sora never dreamt to sound.

But somebody was dancing. In the shadows and with a precision you could hardly even watch. He danced around the light, playing with it, letting it catch in the hollows beneath his ribs, over his collarbone. Every time he reached the centre he twisted away, just before he could be caught. The whites of his eyes glinted in the darkness, like glass, or mirrors. A thinning reflection told a smile beginning to slide.

The bottles fell in slow-motion.

Sora woke up slowly, with a hard-on and some bemused disappointment. He never had recurring dreams.

---

Kairi sat on the doorstep with gravel pressing into her palms. Trying to give up biting her nails for nobody even knew how long, and it was working. Even though she had to practically sit on her hands most of the day. It was working. She picked up some stray stones and tossed them in the general direction of Sora's bedroom window, smiling a little, picturing him struggling into crisp uniform, half-undressed, thinking of her.

_Maybe._

There was something achingly comforting in this morning, sears of blue sky cut into angles, plane tracks drifting overhead, all the noises of white clapboard life. Lawnmowers and breakfast and kids spilling out, awkward with new uniform, into the autumn semester. Kairi would have denied it, but after Decay, any regularity was a relief.

To the drift of melting butter and toothpaste, the front door swung open.

"Wasn't it _awesome_?!"

Turning to Sora, she knew, right there, that they'd never talk honestly about that night, of awkward pauses and the weird sense of not existing at all. Insanely optimistic, Sora was, always had been(_always will be_), the master of letting it go. She stood to meet him and the two immediately fell into steps they'd been matching for years, down Sora's drive and into the street. After two months in sneakers, black leather cast them stumbling.

"We did it."

"Tidus and Selph are going to go insane that we didn't ask them. You think we should say?"

"I think we should keep it to ourselves."

Because Kairi wasn't sure if she could keep talking, if she could keep smiling and laughing whilst she remembered the mess in the mirror once she had crawled home, a little girl playing dress-up in clothes silly and clownish make-up. She had stared into eyes at first defiant, then tired, finally crumpling to frustration. Guys at school, in the street. They often looked. But she wasn't like those Decaying girls, couldn't move or think or walk like them. She clung to the thought of that silver haired guy, who _had_ looked, had looked and smiled before turning away. Still. Telling Tidus and Selphie how awesome it had been. She wasn't sure if she could lie about that. She turned to Sora and raised her eyebrows, resorted to the two aged syllables she knew would seal silence.

"Secret?"

Secrets had swollen but the trust remained the same.

"Sure, if you like."

No silver convertible broke this silence, just Sora's laughter. "I don't care anything about this last year. _Anything_ but maths first period."

Their shoes in identical precision. From a distance one. Kairi tried to swallow the words but they spilled out regardless.

"Anything but no lessons with you."

---

If there was anything worse than having maths double period, first thing on Monday, it was knowing that he had maths double period first thing Monday for the rest of the year. Maybe if Mr. Hegan could have accepted his class' turmoil, things would have been better. A joke about boredom, about dread. But Mr. Hegan could imagine no greater pleasure for twenty five pupils than ninety minutes of Pythagoras to begin the week. Mr. Hegan wasn't just enthusiastic about maths. He was fucking _poetic_ about it.

If Kairi weren't in this class, Sora thought that ok, he could die now.

He slumped into the warmth of a window seat, surveyed the view with a kind of helpless acceptance. This sweaty chair and scrawled desk the scene of hours of boredom to come. He could see almost the whole town from here, from those three slow flights up, and the view was sweet but still. The two school soccer fields were separated by the ridiculous drive which almost every classroom faced. Used only once a year, for the annual November town parade, which ended in a mass of floats and pet beauty contests and fireworks scattered about the school grounds. The drive itself was lined with ashes, the groundsmen's baby, all set up and newly gravelled and gods forbid you actually _walk_ up it. It remained closed for three hundred and sixty four days a year, cordoned off by almost unbelievably pretentious signs: **Proud Property of the Governors, Headmaster and High School. For Parade Usage Only. DO NOT ENTER**.

The pitches had been sprinkled for a new season, a new rush of hope, a new championship they could win, but wouldn't. A bus full of fabled city kids would draw up, crush a few coaches' hearts, pull away back out to bigger lives.

Another line of trees split the grounds from the road down which Sora had walked to school since he was five years old, then with his mother clutching his hand, then by bike, finally with Kairi, metallic red growing rusty and abandoned, replaced for the way she laughed at his jokes, the way they could talk about nothing for ever. Every so often cars crawled by, lazily obeying the triangular signs local parents had erected, **10mph Protect Our Children**. Roofs stretched out, his own house, hers. The main street of precious shops, all china and that pot something stuff his mother used to scent the bathroom.

Then, the ocean. Sora's whole life story neatly contained in one Kodak shot. Only(_and we did_) - you couldn't see Decay from here. Decay was behind the school, on the outskirts. A fable amongst the adults, maybe a symbol of departure, something a little imperfect in their faultless little town. They had once -

Sora looked up as the rabble settled. Mr. Hegan had arrived. He lay down his file and beamed. Mr. Hegan had spent his summer wondering whether or not his wife was fucking the guy next door, and doing the _Times_ crossword. It was good to be back.

He frowned a little, Sora saw, taking the register. Glanced around, shrugged, started smiling again. Turned and wrote six letters on the whiteboard.

AB² plus BC² equals AC²

"You should already know this formula from last year, but can anybody-? Yes? YES! Pythagoras! A, B and C referring to a triangle's angles. When we put two angles together, we have-? Exactly! A line. So, AB, BC and AC - a triangle's sides. For the next fortnight, we'll be studying this theorem, moving on to trigonometry, sin, cos, tan-"

_Back to Decay. _

_Teasing the light, you couldn't learn to move like that, never predictable, always changing just when your eyes learnt to follow. And casting absence of music an advantage, when you could write it yourself, leaving moulds of your body in the air. _

"Sometimes it's easy. Certain numbers give exact figures. You see? Four squared plus three squared is five squared. Sixteen plus nine, twenty five. And we call these numbers Pythagorean triples. You'll definitely need to remember that one. Pythagorean triples."

_That was all it was. Admiration. Body deceiving you. And in the shadows. He looked androgynous, anyway. Anyway. It was a **dream**._

"Pythagorean triples are rare. Usually, it's messy. Usually, you're going to have to use your calculator. All the sides, _messy_. All the answers inexact. That's harder, obviously. But that's the way it usually turns out."

_But when you woke up, remembered. You still felt it. How good it felt. Strange. In sleep. Lies to Kairi keeping you up. A stranger dancing in your head and you're free._

"In that case, I'd like your answers down to just three significant figures."

Kairi faced around in her chair and raised one disbelieving eyebrow. Teachers had been enthusiastic before. Mr. Hegan recited maths instructions like they were Shakespeare.

_And what did you think of, dealing with it?_

"So, I've got your new books here, two each, one for class work, one for home. Write your names, my name, subject-"

_In the shower? Were you thinking of Kairi?_

What Sora would remember was Kairi's low whistle, a sound he'd never heard before, air of impression catching where her lips were dry. Before he could nudge her, before he could ask what was up, he saw.

"Somebody's walking up the sacred drive!"

For the strangest moment, it was as if daydream and life has collided in fluid, elegant steps, even from a distance, nobody else moving like that, just one foot in front of the other. But in Decay he had looked so old, and so jaded, and so cool.

"The _parade_ one?"

And he still did, even in uniform, white shirt tails open, collar parted two buttons down, blue blazer a little too big, billowing out in the wind behind him. The breeze cast his hair to liquid iron, draping aqua gaze. Sora's mind reeled between the last seconds and that night. Now it was a natural flicker of spotlights, the sun sliding between those ashes, ashes before Decay, his body and everything touching changing, black light black (_don't you wonder what he looks like in the_) light and a wash of white as he stepped into the sun. There could never be a mistake. As the books spilled out of Mr. Hegan's hands, as Kairi's heart gave an unfamiliar wrench, as the classroom erupted into disbelief around him, Sora kept his eyes fixed on the stranger who had been in Decay that night, the stranger who had stared towards them. The stranger surveying the school with a wry little smile. From neighbouring rooms, Sora thought he could hear the distant cheers of other classes. Pride and joy. Almost every classroom facing it. Every classroom facing him. A school already half in love.

With a slight shrug, he disappeared into the entrance hall, pupils half hanging out of the windows to watch.

"He's going to be in so much shit," somebody whispered.

The maths set were huddled on one side of the room, still gazing out, now at nothing. Mr. Hegan, too, a discarded pile of textbooks sliding from his desk. He adjusted his glasses and blinked, eased himself from off of Kairi's desk.

"It's been a decade since anybody stepped on that outside of parade day," he said.

"And what-?"

"Expelled. Straight off."

"I heard it was an accident, and they _still_ got chucked out."

"But if the kid's new..."

"Well, I've never seen him before. He looks kind of old..."

"Maybe he'll be-"

The classroom door swung open. Twenty-eight pairs of eyes shot around, though nobody really needed to look. Sora could have drawn the image with his eyes closed; where his shirt was unbuttoned, the hard shadow of his collar bone, an easy posture, one elbow against the frame, an eyebrow cocked and that same wonderful, self-confident smile.

"... Hi."

Mr. Hegan had never been a smooth man, but on the verge of his middle-aged crisis, it was never too late to begin. He turned around, stumbled over a pupil's leg, and smiled.

"You must be Riku."

* * *

Afternoon sun dimmed a little. Skin began to dry. 

They never fell asleep embraced, but there was always some vague contact, the scrawl of themselves, maybe a bigger comfort. That everything was different, but nothing had really changed. He lay on his side, one of Leon's hands resting at the base of his spine. Bad sleeper, the bed too small, room too light. Every time he closed his eyes a hundred flashes told the window's lines in different colours. Sometime, Leon began to laugh again. Sweat sharpening his bangs, Cloud twisted over, pushed Leon's hair away to kiss him lazy. The brunet usually loathed contact after sex, but the flick of tongue against his own said that this, a few moments, were ok.

"You should laugh more. I wish you did."

"I'm trying."

"You still thinking about that mall janitor?"

"No, but..." His body trembled against Cloud's, remembering the guy's face, his stammered apologies. That had been funny enough. "I was just thinking..."

"What?"

"I just fucked you in the same bed where my parents'd read me goodnight stories."

Laughter to silence to drifting to dreams. They moved closer together and the amusement seeped out of their breathing. Cloud watched Leon, grinned back at closed lids. It was strange, for Leon out of everybody in the world. He was the only person Cloud had seen who slept smiling.

Sleep a temporary, half-hearted death.

_Is that - phone?_

The room bled back into view. Leon was lying on his back, telephone receiver in one hand, not saying anything, maybe just finished, hanging up now and hell, never sleep in the afternoon when it leaves you like this, the breathing in and out and grit and time anonymous. Cloud's voice came out muffled and thick.

"Who was that?"

"Hoax."

"What did they say?"

"They just laughed. Don't ask me."

"Time?"

"Four fifteen."

Leon's eyes were closed no entry. The bed's pressure shifted, and Cloud heard him stalk down the hall, the bathroom door slam and lock. Seconds later, the distant patter of a shower. Afternoon naps always left Leon feeling like shit and the blond collapsed back, scrubbing at his eyes, just a Leon thing, just a stupid thing, nothing personal.

Nothing ever personal.

When he rolled onto his front, Cloud could feel the slight bruises which would form at his hips. Everything so wonderful and then quick replies and casual dismissal. He would never have complained, but Leon really did have this unique ability to make any brief tenderness burn to fuck-and-run.

The phone started ringing again.

And Cloud didn't even think. No moral debate, conscience absent. All automatic, he reached over the side of the bed and yawned down the line.

"Yeah?"

Cloud would later wonder, how Leon could ever have mistaken it for laughter(_all this has left me with is - that noise - to live with), _the sound crumbled amongst bad static, rushing down the line from some broken place thirty minutes from sight. Cloud thought first of some helpless, dying animal which had found Leon's number and was capable of using a telephone, what the hell, the absurd shit crowding into his mind to dim the real possibility, the certainty, that this distant mass of sobbing and words, that these tatters were a person.

A person who felt.

"- I'm sorry - that we were the same - the only one - we were the same. Not just you - don't give yourself the credit, not all of it - long time coming - but everybody finds somebody better -"

An awful sense of familiarity which Cloud couldn't quite place.

"- long time coming, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You're only the half of it, anymore than that and I think –"

"Who are you?" he whispered.

"What? You're not-? _Leon_?"

Dead. The dial tone exploded in Cloud's ear. He didn't move. Even when some safe, recorded voice told him to dial a number or hang up the phone, he didn't move. Even when Leon entered, half-wrapped in a white towel, damp bangs teasing his eyes. Even when Leon's scowl began to curl. He didn't move.

"The hell did you answer my phone for?"

"They weren't laughing, Leon."

"What?"

"The person on the phone. They weren't laughing."

"It's just a hoax caller."

"Well, they knew your name."

In sex and arrangements, Leon's silent authority called every shot, but from this spot, under pained blue eyes and a tone he had never once heard before, Leon's shots were suddenly all so petty. So trained for nonchalance amongst panic, he didn't even need to find the composure. Emotion slipped straight and Leon shook his head all fine, to keep you happy. Their eyes locked, cynical grey on fraught navy, attached as Leon listened to dial-back, paused, nodded slightly.

"Yeah, I know the number. He's just this kid I used to know."

_Funny how you knew the number straight off, then, Leon._

"He sounded pretty disturbed. I mean, why'd he call you?"

"Because sometimes he does shit like this. For attention."

"Do you know where he lives?"

"Vaguely. _What_?"

"You didn't hear it."

"I did, actually. And I thought he was laughing."

"I think we should go check up on him. He wasn't laughing, Leon."

Leon grimaced, cold and damp and exposed, conditioned air suddenly sharp against his chest. He let the towel fall, began to rummage for clothes, liking Cloud's eyes on him, on him even in the midst of all this over-reaction.

"You don't know how he laughs, Cloud," white T-shirt melting against wet skin. "He was laughing. Like he will in our faces if we show up. He'll laugh at me."

"You know where he lives?"

"Didn't I say that already?"

_Like you ever thought it was laughter._

It was almost impossible to say no with Cloud looking at him like that, naked and ruffled and juvenile in concern. It was almost easier to abide.

"Whatever. But I'm driving."

_Like you ever thought it was laughter at all._

---

"Why did he phone you?"

Cloud's stare burning his mask raw.

"If he's just some kid?"

Skin peeling back to leave a mass of flesh and capillaries and eventually just his mind, broken and looking like, not even knowing what it looked like.

"If he's who I think he is... I think I saw you. I saw you two together, sometimes."

And from the passenger seat, Cloud _would _see it all, see the flashes of past relentlessly worked away from action and habit.

"He came up to me, you know. A few weeks back. I didn't understand what he was talking about, the way he was ranting. He seemed crazy. But now. I - I think I understand."

A new tumour of desperate, clammy worry beginning to swell. _Gods, what are we going to find?_

"Don't say you broke him for me."

Leon finally turned to meet that intrusive gaze, only to snap his eyes straight back to the road. Cloud had been facing away all along, forehead pressed against the window. Not even looking at him.

---

Cloud smiled, amazed at how Leon had found the place(_vaguelyjustthiskid_) so easily.

The house was ordinary in almost every way, perhaps a little bigger, no cars in the drive. Leon pulled expertly up to the front door and killed the engine. Two seatbelts snapped back in synchrony, but it was Cloud who climbed out first.

The windows were mirrors, each dark, half concealed by white curtains. He walked around slowly, scuffing shoes along where grass met patio. The lawn had yellowed from the hottest summer for a decade, and a few dishevelled plants matted the perimeter, all dead or dying. A plastic green table sat collecting grime by sliding glass doors. Apart from that, the garden was completely empty. Cloud thought then of where he should be, Zack's, with a barbecue on and some marathon football game about to begin and a hundred kids racing around throwing coke cans at one another.

It was so quiet.

He pressed his face against the patio doors, covering the glass to avoid glare. The room beyond was dim and deserted. Bookshelves and television and chairs. Almost achingly normal.

Leon jumped about three feet when Cloud banged on the back windshield, emerging from the opposite direction as to which he'd left. The brunet rolled his eyes and opened the door.

"I can't see anything," Cloud nodded towards the house. "Think I should try the doorbell?"

"Maybe he left."

"He didn't sound like he was going anywhere. And that was his home number, right?"

Leon shrugged and lent against the bonnet, massaged his temples. His hair was still damp from the shower, and little rivulets or water had settled into his collar. The house was engulfed in shade, and fall wasn't far off. He sighed and stepped up to the door, and Cloud pressed the bell. In the mist glass their reflections were mutilated, pieces of each running into the other, bodies in shreds. Cloud pressed it twice and then he pressed it again, peering inside for some sign of life.

"I think the hall light could be on."

"So he babbled down the phone, went out, left the light on. Cloud-"

"- He said that it wasn't your fault, Leon. Did you hear that part? He said that he was so sorry. He was so sorry, and he was crying, and it wasn't a joke. It wasn't a joke and _he's **in** there_." Cloud clawed at his eyes, still blurry from sleep, still reeling from the phone call, still frantic at the thought that this was all just about to fall apart. "I mean, didn't you _hear _it?"

Leon let the words slowly fall into place. Leon heard the noises again, as he had been hearing them ever since he muttered "Hoax" and let the line die, noises spilled from a strange, fallen being gasping for some shattered pride he could have left. Leon understood that this was something which could no longer be ignored. Leon hoped, somewhere, that Cloud wouldn't be hating him, wouldn't hate him as he reached below one of the scattered plant pots, shifted the spare key(_just so you can –hah– wait around to surprise_ _me_) out of its hiding place, which he had been told in secrecy, in trust, months ago. He hoped that Cloud wouldn't be hating him, even when he turned the key in the door and their reflections span to nothing and they disappeared altogether.

It was dark inside, and Cloud said nothing. The knowledge that Leon had been here many times before, had lied so adamantly. It wasn't a painful shock, more a slow hollow growing in the pit of his stomach, something he had known all along, hope searing into jagged little pieces which could now dissolve.

The hallway light was on.

It took Cloud only a second to see what was missing from this place, what defined it away from average. There were no photographs on the walls. Not one.

Leon took the stairs one at a time. On the banister, Cloud watched his own knuckles turn an ill, bone white. The walls were painted cream and they were empty. And he walked and the hallway light was on and Leon was two stairs ahead, always a little ahead, and when Cloud had first seen Leon, he had thought that nobody else could pull of that leather, and now, now Cloud didn't know what he was thinking.

_Gods what_

Leon knew where to go. There was only door closed.

_what are we_

Knew that door.

_(now they were both laughing, the contrast of skin and tone and feeling, the cold of winter and the warmth of water beginning to fall.)_

_what are we going to find_

He twisted the handle with an immediate urgency which took Cloud by surprise, because suddenly

_Leon?_

he knew.

_(sometimes I feel like you've saved me.)_

Leon vanished into the end. Cloud saw the shock of destruction, a red deep enough to be black, parts beginning to congeal against bleached tiles, the slash of water, Leon's cry, and he was there, the voice, the wounded, naked and shuddering in Leon's arms and Leon thrust the phone at him at Cloud and call an ambulance call an ambulance now I think we're too I don't know. And Cloud took it cradled the receiver like the last part of all he had left two times to dial three digits because that was when he saw a rusty handprint on the plastic and imagined listening to himself himself a lifetime ago warm and content when he picked it up from the bed and he had said yeah? and even then even then oh gods even then the kid was already dying.

_---_

_He's really beautiful._

Cloud watched through frantic movements, between the green-clad bodies struggling with various pieces of medical equipment he didn't know the names of. All he knew was that the drivers looked distraught, harrowed, and above the siren he could barely hear what they were saying. He built a little cocoon of ignorance and instead focused on the boy, now wrapped in a blanket, wrapped with tubes and an oxygen mask but still beautiful, really. There was a peace to it, to Cloud and the boy, which neither would be able to recall

He was far unconscious, face flat, hair streaked red on silver grey in the damp. His chest moved and his eyes flickered against lids tight shut. Cloud wondered if that was technical, if you could dream half-dead. He didn't guess so.

He wanted to say that he was sorry. Not sure who to or what for. Hoped that he would find a chance. Maybe just sorry for himself.

---

There was blood beneath his fingernails and every comfortable stranger seemed to be staring. Magazines said, _Be beautiful in seven steps! Get confident today!_ Cloud's face said, Anguish. And something in Leon's stomach churned and churned(_guilt, maybe_) as he sat deadly still and killed each facial muscle, one by one. Old legend. _It takes forty-two muscles' contraction to frown, but only four to punch some bastard in the face_. Two thoughts hit Leon; one, that the only bastard in the room was himself, and two; it was a shock that he hadn't developed some facial muscle exhaustion over the years.

He and Cloud hadn't spoken a word to each other. The ambulance assistant had required one ride with them, to be there as comfort if 'the patient' suddenly regained conciousness. Leon wanted to laugh, as if Riku would really want to open his eyes and find the sources of his hatred sitting and grinning a metre away. Cloud had barely seemed to hear the driver's words. He had swayed on the spot and unexpectedly stumbled forward, slamming the doors behind him. Leon had endured a long, silent drive, wishing that the car radio still worked, remembering how it had broken.

Now they sat amongst strangers and bad magazines and a receptionist quietly typing in the background, just drifting, waiting.

"His name was Riku, by the way."

Leon wasn't one for beginning conversations, but this addled silence and those quiet clicking keys and everywhere people flicking through magazines, he was choking on it. There wasn't anything to say, so he had said anything. Cloud's eyes were still exhausted, unfocused upon an anti-smoking advertisement. He didn't turn or move, and Leon wasn't about to try again.

"**It still is**."

So unexpected, and those three words held all of the bitterness Cloud could muster, all of the resentment, a lament amongst the ashes of them, this one relationship they had both found which wasn't a cliché. Here it crumbled. Cloud was so tired. Tired of Leon's fucking refusals, Leon's little persona of being such a tough guy, such a tough guy when he couldn't even accept the reality tearing everything apart. Cloud didn't know anything about Riku, wasn't sure if he ever would. It was difficult to relate a name to the brief shards of ruin he had caught.

Something in Leon shifted. If this was how it was going to be, Cloud blaming him, Cloud blaming and resentful, well, two could play that game. Anybody watching would have seen the tightening of his jaw, eyes congealing from liquid to steel, old walls settling into hard-worn places, armour adjusting and fitted as tightly as ever. Then they would have seen Leon simply stand up and walk away.

Dully, Cloud wondered where he was going, if he would be back, if this was some final act of detachment to top all the hundreds of fucking thousands of others. Alone, the blond closed his eyes and let his head droop back over the chair, rubbing at his neck, letting it crick this way and that. The muscles there were always a little tense, always ready for the nurse's footsteps moving towards him, a folder beneath one of her arms, lips poised to -

"He's in a critical condition, but stabilised."

So stitch your smile on and act relieved, relieved for things you know nothing about. Maybe he just wanted to follow Leon and walk away, change time, perhaps. Saw another guy in a life split in two, the Cloud who would be playing football in Zack's garden, strong enough to deal, smart enough never to have to.

"I'm afraid," a sigh of having to do this so many times before, "I'll need to ask you a few questions. Your name, for starters - is that spelt like the ones in the sky? - ok. And your relationship with the patient?"

"I don't really know him at all. I mean, we've only ever spoken once. He's sort of... a friend of a good friend. That's Leon - he's just - he's sort of - he's around."

The stammering understatements were so ridiculous, he wanted to laugh.

"That good friend, that Leon's around here?"

"Somewhere. Yeah."

"Well," the nurse glanced up the corridor in both directions, twiddled her pencil. "I think it would be a good idea if you went and found him. Then I can ask you the questions together."

Cloud opened his eyes, detecting some annoyance in her voice, but it wasn't annoyance at all, just a jaded sadness where her eyes were deeper than his own. Seeing this every day. Maybe not everybody got as numb as he'd have guessed. She was younger than she sounded, blonde hair scraped back into a bun, glasses leaving little red crescents around her nose.

"Listen, Mr. Strife. Please don't leave. That boy, Riku had a reason, and he was lucky. I see - we just need to get to the bottom of it."

_You see so many already gone_. Lucky, having to relate that word to the spotless, empty clean of the bathroom and the sobbing and the contrast of black red against pitch white. Cloud already knew he never would. Would never be lucky. Could never leave.

"I'll be waiting," she said. "Ask for Nurse Trepe. Find him."

His knees cracked quietly as he stood.

Leon wasn't in the hospital bathroom. Every cubicle was deserted and only a man in tatters stared dully out of the mirror. Little lilac fossils of love scarred his neck, mementoes from a different life, though it couldn't have been more than three hours back. A cold, clinical smell of vomit seemed to hang, sent Cloud reeling down the corridor, enough of the hospital, of disinfectant and white uniforms and too much emotion contained within these clean, spotless halls. The settings betrayed in every face he passed. He wanted so badly to be the kind of person who could leave, could accept that this had nothing to do with him. Wanted to have listened, wanted time to have frozen when Leon placed a hand on the small of his back and fell asleep smiling. Wanted to scream how none of this was his fault, it really wasn't. Feeling had gotten him nowhere but to this dead, bright corridor, and the door at the end through which he burst. For an instant, sunspots exploded in front of his eyes, and in that one blind moment before miniature muscles adjusted, he loved the sensation, that he could be anybody.

* * *

School boy Riku. Mm. Heh, and is it forty-two muscles to frown? Or forty-three? :( 

One line stolen from the very wonderful _Six Feet Under_, season 4.

Thanks for reading :). Sorry for the maths lesson (credit to school textbook, mass hatred), and I hope the suicidal Riku scene didn't fall to corny plot device or over-angst. I'd love to hear what you think. Good and bad. - Abs


	3. 2, A Beautiful Day

If shounen-ai, sex or shopping offends you, it may be a good idea to skip Cloud and Leon's half. XD

Thanks - babymar-mar, daea, Praetor, Uzumaki-sama, mysleevesR2long, Mahon, Holstein, Darkazriel.

**Degrees of Separation – 2 – A Beautiful Day**

'_How was I to know the future's black as coal?' _– Jesse Malin

Sora spent Monday watching Riku's entrance replaying, carved into his eyelids, slid with stills of the same boy walking through Decay and dancing over and over again in his head. The lights were pounding and the music bled steadily into his scalp. A strange headache, one which sharpened every time he closed his eyes.

"It's _him_, isn't it?"

Kairi hissing back into Sora's ear as Riku nodded a yes to Mr. Hegan, lounged into a front row seat as if it had been sculptured for the notches of his spine. Riku called away five minutes later, the headmaster's secretary flustered and muttering of school property and gosh, there _was_ written notification to take a different path, wasn't there? The class erupting, again, as Riku strolled after her, nonchalant enough not to even glance back. Not to bask in the rabble he'd left, in the admiration, in the way all thumbs were up, and Kairi was lost with some disbelieving grin. Riku. Not looking back for anything.

"The boy from Decay."

She turned to stranger with his name on her lips, a girl Sora wasn't sure he'd like to meet. There was a phoniness to it, an overreaction. Practically breathless, and he was a good-looking guy, and he walked like nobody else, and he had strolled up the sacred drive, but he was vaguely human, all the same.

Sora was a minority.

"... So he was kicked out, and what I heard, the science teacher was never the same again. He had to retire early, and now, what I heard, he's knitting and scheming how to get revenge..."

"... But the witness protection programme isn't working out, because everybody knows already..."

"... It was the craziest thing I've ever seen. He rode down on a motorbike, and he did this jump, like, straight over the bars..."

"... The headmaster was freaking completely. He tried chasing after, but it was just stupid, even trying. He went and broke down, on the front steps. And Raku just stood over him and _laughed_..."

And he was invisible, as if the tangibility of sight or conversation were failure. Riku could be in the headmaster's office, on the verge of expulsion, or he could be in the process of relocation by the cops, or he could be nursing his bike, filmed with oil and triumph. Rumours' only fuel is ever their subject's silence.

Kairi embraced them, reappeared at Sora's side with a new story every other moment. Riku had walked into the classroom looking at her, recognising them. Sora trudged to history heavy with annoyance, and a frantic skew of words rushing behind his eyes. There was a lot to debate and ponder and decide, but battles of centuries before, they didn't seem to have too much relevance.

_It was him, at Decay. No doubt about it. You dreamt of him, and here he is. Freedom. So what do you say? Do you ask him where he learnt to dance? Do you look for a little sanity, a little explanation? Who are you? And where did you come from?_

"Gentle first lesson in, class."

_And why?_

"I just want you to get down notes from pages thirty to thirty five, the basics. How Ansem's work affected the century in his wake. Scientific discovery, relevance today. It's all simple stuff, and we'll discuss it next lesson. So I'll be wanting silence, please. I'll be checking your notes next lesson, and if they're not done-"

Silence a perfect stage for this spiral dance.

_You're thinking like he'll remember you. It was a fleeting glance in the darkness, and he was looking at Kairi, anyway. And gods, really, why do you care? Maybe he'll be a friend. Maybe not. Haven't you made enough? This desperation, since when was that you? _

Ansem's scientific studies, and their historical impacts.

_Under water, shower, after the dream, cold tiles against your back warming with time, hands moving down with a guilty reluctance and silence, then, too, without a name to whisper, just a face and a fantasy._

With a desperate desire to think about anything different(_something perfectly normal_), Sora thought about Tidus and Selphie.

Tidus and Selphie, whose mothers had met at one of those classes women went to, to learn how to breathe when giving birth. Like it would apply. Tidus and Selphie who had been born in May within a fortnight of one another, whose mothers had maybe breathed in synchrony, Sora thought, if they'd remembered their instructions. So they breathed in synchrony and out came Tidus and Selphie, and Tidus and Selphie grew up and started dating when they were fourteen, and lost their virginities to one another the night of last year's May prom, which was after her sixteenth birthday and right before his.

If you asked, Tidus or Selphie would happily recite their lives to you. Both unnaturally upbeat, terrifyingly positive. And people called _Sora_ an optimist. Tidus or Selphie would shrug, grin awshucks and talk of how Tidus would take over his father's beach business; managing the local mini-league's blitzball champions, the Abes; selling boards and balls from a little wooden shack with brands and surfing posters on the windows. After awhile, they'd buy the building next door, convert it to a beachside café. Selphie's notebook was full of possible names, none of which were massively appealing. They had no doubts that all of this would come true. It wasn't dream or chance, it was life, comfortably tangible, set out on flat yellow turf three miles west.

Sora didn't know what he was doing in the next ten minutes, but maybe lunch, lunch was a good idea.

His history pad was blank apart from a title and one sketchy pencil line amongst the dozens of processed blue ones, a line he didn't remember drawing. The paper crumpled in his fist, rocketed off the bin's rim as he stumbled after the rest of the class, out into sun so bright he was nearly blind. Missed. On a good day, he'd have stopped to pick it up. Today, he was out of the classroom, dreading the notes he'd have to find, and turning down the hallway before he decided, with a pointless ache, that it could have been a trace of horizon.

---

The weather broke.

Tuesday morning and Sora looked up to a sky in bruised crusts, undersides of clouds like damp bandages, trailing over the ocean. He stood on his bed and shifted the skylight to smell the rain, dank and foreign in summer's wake. The first storm of fall. School again. He jumped down and fumbled for music and clothes, the warmth of sleep beginning to seep away. A radio DJ was feeling a little ironic.

_Goddamn right, it's a beautiful day._

He caught pieces of himself in the mirror as he dressed, still mussed from sleep, nodding to the music, grinning at himself for being such a dork. He always got surprised, every time he found his reflection. Sora wasn't arrogant, but he was perceptive enough to know that something had gone right. He wasn't beautiful, like Riku, or cute, like Tidus, but people glanced at him when he passed them by, beneath lashes, a boy with marbled eyes and a contagious smile stamped momentarily into their day.

Kairi called it a vague molestability.

She was already waiting for him, a pink umbrella clutched in her fists. Sora thought that maybe it would be better to get wet than to walk to school under that thing, but she reached for his hand and he smiled and slipped beneath magenta.

"I hate the rain.

"'Cause it messes up your hair?"

"So_ra_!"

He laughed, tugged the umbrella away from her, begun to run. A paper boy had to swerve for his life. Kairi slid along on wet leaves, shielding her face and screaming and giggling until he slowed enough for her to grab his arm, still dancing the umbrella away, though, just out of her reach. They were both soaked enough not to need it.

"So c'mon, what's it worth?"

"Just give-"

"A kiss?"

She sighed and leant into him. There was no contrast of temperature, this time. In movies, you kissed in the rain and you were good as in love. But their lips were slippery and they didn't fit together and Sora's stomach twanged in the realisation that this wasn't some great romantic moment, just a means to an end. She just wanted her stupid pink umbrella. He pulled back and handed it over and they stood in silence for a second, Kairi trying the handle, testing.

"I think you've broken it," she said.

---

Sora knew that if he didn't get some history notes, murder was a likelihood, a real, honest to gods possibility. Detention, anyhow. That was how he came to be with one hand resting on the door handle, peering through the frosted glass doors to darkness beyond. It had been the first announcement in assembly; that the school had been unable to locate a new librarian, so the library would be temporarily out-of-bounds at lunchtimes. The English teachers had been drawing straws over who had to mind it after class, but they had refused to give up their midday break for anything under an extra grand. The headmaster had spluttered down the phone to a few governors before arranging another sign. **DO NOT ENTER**. **COME BACK AFTER SCHOOL**. He liked authority and he liked boundaries. The signs sort of came too.

The way Sora saw it, the library door had no lock, and the books were still there. Besides, what was the danger of being unsupervised? In a library? That his head was about to be crushed beneath War and Peace?

He glanced down the corridor and dashed through, waiting for the lasers, alarms perhaps. With a slight grin around, his heart settled.

_I really should do things like this more often._

Chuckling at the fact he found it so hardcore defiant in the first place.

Nestled away from the drive and classrooms, the library was a wasteland of darkness and dust, the smell of new books hanging close to shelves, shadows draped across blotted wooden flooring. Sora could count previous visits on one hand, but they had all been in summer, pre-exam crises. The place was different now. For a moment he thought the ceiling to be black, but it wasn't, was glass, the dead sky still bowling out for ocean, lashed in lightning and storm.

The library was laid out for suspense. A single aisle straight down the centre, shelves forming deep alcoves. It was impossible to see more than one section at a time.

_History. Right. _

Once you noticed yourself breathing, it suddenly became a task.

Sora didn't particularly understand the Dewey Decimal system, and it took him awhile, squinting at tiny print and tugging badly-laminated books from the shelves. The history texts were shoved near the back, the left alcove before the last. The story so far, neatly contained on paper, bound by card and awaiting. Sora had twenty minutes. He dragged up a stool and struggled to focus. Light was too risky.

_Even for a practised rebel such as yourself_.

The clouds flinched outside and his page lit into ease. Sora had to admit, he was sort of a sucker for history class. It was like some great, ongoing movie which shifted with the centuries. Sure, stuck in a little seaside town, his life wasn't likely to puncture it, but the possibility was always a hopeful little gnaw. Amongst algebra and formulas and balancing chemical equations, it was nice to spend a couple of periods a week alongside old reality.

Spotted pages crinkling as he turned, turn smooth skim, the colour of iodine or scraped gold. Stories of heroes, battles, worlds saved and lost again. He rubbed dust out of his eyes and yawned. It seemed as if the pages were still turning, in this drained state, all automatic, just turning. He found some lined paper and struggled to focus, groggy from lack of sleep and this enclosing darkness.

But pages were still turning.

Sora stood up. His hands were shaking a little. If it was a teacher, he was screwed. And who else would be spending their lunchtime hanging around the forbidden library? Maybe somebody who didn't want company. Maybe somebody who wouldn't want to see Sora peering around the shelves, see his mouth falling open, little jolts of surprise and he'd never imagined, this proximity. It was like coming face to face with an idol, somebody you never really expected to exist in the first place.

He was straddling the chair, jaw resting on bare arms on the back, spinning slowly, shoes rocking to keep the slight momentum, bangs engulfing his eyes in shadow, blazer discarded on the ground. Sora couldn't make out the cover of the book he was reading, couldn't tell if maybe he had just drifted off whilst holding it. Had always hated people wearing sunglasses, because if he never concealed the way he felt, why should anybody else?

This stranger concealed everything. Sora was about to retreat, unnoticed, when neutral lips gave to a smile. He didn't look up or move, but he spoke.

"I read somewhere how strange it is... what you can do with twenty-six letters. All of this. Don't you think?"

Riku snapped his book shut and brushed his fringe away. His gaze had a casual arrogance Sora could never imagine slipping. Some detached high-speed collision on the hard shoulder; it was hard to look but harder to tear yourself away.

"I guess so," Sora said. Then, realising it was his turn to speak; "Did you get into trouble?"

"Trouble for what?"

"For – for – your entrance."

The inability to conceal, every slice of admiration and shock carried in that stutter.

"I didn't know. I didn't know that it was sacred land and all."

"Didn't you read the-?"

"No, no, that's just what I told the Principal. I'm not illiterate. I read the _notice_." Riku was laughing, mocking him, that laugh, but somehow openly addictive, too. Sora would have said something equally gullible, to have him laugh like that again. "Everybody here... You're all so simple... I'm sorry."

"Simple, as in, stupid?"

"No, no... Just, like, innocent, I guess. I don't know."

Riku stood up, spun the chair away with the careless grace Sora had already begun to accept, a grace that meant Riku would never slouch, or trip over his own feet. In eighth grade, Sora's feet had grown three sizes within six months. He had spent more time on the floor that year than the average toddler.

Riku was miming for an explanation, eyes slanted, amused.

"Ok. What do you think I'm doing here?"

Sora shrugged. "Reading?"

The laughter twitched but subsided, folded back into skin that couldn't feel as smooth as it looked, a faultless pale still half curved away, because he was replacing his book now, one slender finger following the titles and _there_. Sora wanted to remember, wanted to know, but the spines instantly blended. He would never read the words Riku had been reading, reading and listening to him scramble for history notes in the minutes before they met.

"Well, yeah. But really, anything forbidden, it has to be intriguing. I saw the sign and in I went. That's what librarians should do if they really want to get all kids reading. Seal off the libraries. Ban them all."

That little perverse thrill, even at the smallest thing?"

Riku looked up, and for the first time, the darkness filming his features flickered away. Thunder and lightning had found the ocean, and now there was only rain, a dull pattering upon blurred glass. He stepped closer.

"You know that feeling?"

In all of his bemusement, Sora was no way going to step back.

"But there's nothing really here, right? I mean, sure it's forbidden, but that's because the librarian retired. Aren't you... disappointed?"

"No," Riku said. "Not at all."

Something about the silence and the way Riku lulled back into it. Something about the silence made Sora have to snip it.

"So... you want to get lunch together?" Sora glanced at a watch he had never worn for the excuse to look away. "I'm meant to be meeting my friends any minute now."

"How's the food?"

"Aw, don't _ask_!"

"And you're Sora, right?" Riku bent to pick up his blazer, trousers pulling taut(_androgynous, anyway_) around his ass, shoulder blades arching slightly through his shirt as he straightened. "Well, why not?"

Riku moved quickly, strode out into the aisle of shelves. The sky a pasty, translucent white. Dust clumps blinked and danced into visibility. A few steps ahead, tiny spindles of sunlight nestled into silver strands. Sora had the feeling that whoever, wherever they were, nobody would lead Riku.

(**_Just a dream_**.)

With the night at Decay stubbornly ignored or seemingly forgotten, that was becoming easier and easier to believe.

---

It was a mistake. Sora knew that the moment he wound Riku through the cafeteria to their usual table. Kairi saw them coming, and he caught her pupils and mouth dilating before she frantically looked down, hands automatically finding her hair, sweeping strands behind her ears to fall back down the exact same way they always did. Her sudden self-awareness like a miniature betrayal. Sora wanted to tell her not to bother. She looked beautiful without the adjustments, and hadn't he told her enough? Hadn't he always been enough?

Riku slid into Sora's seat, and he knew, knew as he grappled for another chair, glanced to see Kairi enthralled on introduction, knew that he'd made a mistake. He leant in to hear what Riku was beginning to say, everybody quiet for him, like the words were precious stuff. Sora knew. Knew that things between he and Kairi would never quite be the same again.

"To be honest," Riku began, "I had no idea it was _that_ special..."

Was surprised by how little that actually hurt.

* * *

The tarmac had gathered a whole summer's heat and now it was beginning to spew it back out. Cloud watched his mind dream cartoon waves of warmth floating into hazed air, squinted the sun's rays to needles of white, shifted against the wall digging into his hips. There was no shade, just this searing afternoon sun, a hundred shades of it rocketing off the cars parked by number-letter in the mall lot. He'd lost(_smashing against the opposite wall_) the sunglasses Leon had bought him the month before, smooth little back things which he couldn't stop adjusting, and his eyes ached at the back where the light had reached. And then there was Leon, a squiggle of leather down the street, striding from his car, waltzing the white lines with his hands in his pockets and a hunched posture. The heat a circus mirror, and parts of Leon falling to pieces as he approached, a black Picasso shedding his skin, picking it up again, everything but this new, constant half-smile, which was still making Cloud ache. 

They didn't say anything but a sweeping kiss, a kiss about smoke and missing you and the electric sky sweeping ahead.

They drifted in, joined the currents, air conditioning spilling out, like slipping between Egyptian cotton sheets with a dream you'd never have to leave. Cloud couldn't stop smiling, couldn't get used to this, the walking with Leon and knowing he was _his_. Everybody had that slight desire for envy, and he couldn't remember sensing it before, glances brushing off his skin, little signatures of want and need. Cloud couldn't imagine taking it for granted, or being oblivious, or simply frowning and moving forward. Leon's steps were scrawled with purpose.

"You know," Cloud smirked, "I always wondered where you found it all."

There were photographs in the front of Erl Heat, all black and white with streaks of sudden colour, lips and irises outlined in pink. Nobody ended or began, they simply merged, limbs twisted together, slight brushes of flesh or hair entwined. The boys writhed together in indigo diamonds and girls with hair dyed the exact same shade writhed on tarmac. They came together at the centre of the display, holding hands, dolled in symbol tattooes and cut after cut of leather and graffiti across their chests. _Skinny arms make you look vulnerable_.

Leon was already inside, stalking the racks.

Cloud didn't think of anything, sat outside the changing room on a smashed in speaker. There were things he was prepared to do for Leon, and there were clothes like these. He smiled to himself, quietly, and the salesgirl moved closer, wanting to ask why he was smiling, wanting to share a look of complete content she'd never quite grasped. Her hair was henna black and her skirt was all belt.

"You don't want to try anything yourself?"

"Er -" Cloud blinked, grinned. "I'm not sure if it's quite for me."

"You never know. What were you smiling about, before?"

"Smiling?"

"Just then. You were in your own little world."

_And suddenly, everybody wants a piece_.

"I suppose I was just -"

Leon stepped out. New black pants clung to his ass, and fell over bare feet. A tank top stopped right about his naval, colour of blood with oxygen, or roses, sleeves cut off and shredded. The sun had been dyeing his skin a cream chocolate for three months and now it stuck. He had gloves on, fingerless ones, black again, reaching just past his wrists. He surveyed himself in the mirror with an acceptant shrug, stretched his arms out behind him and, raising a lazy brow, turned to Cloud.

Who nodded.

A flip of leather curtain, and the air left with a hollow, like it missed him.

"I suppose -"

"It's alright," the salesgirl said, closing her eyes, turning away. "I understand."

In the two minutes as Leon changed, Cloud bought a reminder of what he had, a slight silver chain fed through a tiny bronze coin. "From shores a long way away," the salesgirl said, doing her job. He would give it to Leon before he left, repeat the words, lift dark locks to fasten it up.

---

Places in every mall which are less tread. An advertisement promised a new store which should have been open two months, and posters peeled away from plaster, concerts long past. There, Cloud and Leon slid down the wall and sat together, munching on pizza and silence, and watching the occasional person passing them by. Some shop was giving out free balloons, parents harassed to blow them taut. One boy went past with his mother, doing it himself, face red with the effort. The balloon was perfect, already twice the size of the child's head, and yet he kept puffing. His mother was attached to a cell phone, hadn't even noticed. Cloud could see the pressure shift right before it burst, overcome with the strangest urge to shout out, stop, kid, it's going, going, gone in one second; the shiny scarlet sphere just a sheet of weird rubber in the kid's hands. His mother flinched at the sound, made some vague noise of dissent, and Cloud waited for the tears and the bawling, but they didn't come. Boy just dropped the red and let his mother lead him away. Cloud rested back against the cool tiles and exhaled. He hadn't realised he was holding his breath.

"I'd have gone insane," he muttered, more to himself. Leon had been watching the scene with his usual disinterest, but his expression twitched to that.

"Brat..."

"Oh, screw you."

"Maybe he wanted it ruined," Leon said. "Kids are always doing that. Dropping their chocolate, bursting the balloon, losing it when it's just right. To see what happens."

"I don't remember ever thinking it through like that."

"Whatever. Maybe you were just clumsy."

Cloud laughed. "Probably."

He felt Leon's hand move between his shirt and spine, surprisingly cold, moving up, rubbing the muscles near his hairline with some determined tenderness. Cloud's voice, when he spoke, was thick with comfort.

"I'm going to be leaving in a month, you know."

Leon's fingers paused, then resumed with the same rigour, easing out the cricks, liking that he knew. He knew how Cloud's neck played up, knew how Cloud rubbed at it when he was tense, how he slept looking a little awkward, twisting to accommodate the aching.

"I know it."

"I used to – I really did want to. Gods, there... that's really good, Leon."

"But you don't want to now."

"No."

"So... don't. I didn't."

Cloud wanted to say a lot of things that would break them, right then. _What did you do, though, Leon? Look at what you did. Look at what it left you with_. But the scar was beautiful in this filtered light, and Leon's hand felt so good, working away. Cloud had always, always found it easier to ignore things, acceptation a weird form of letting things go.

"Not everybody can live the way you do. Things happened to you, and they haven't happened to me, and I don't know if I'd want them to. But I know I want to stay here."

"We'd have all the time," Leon said. "All the time in the world."

"Nobody has all that."

"Get over the philosophy, Cloud," Leon smiled to himself. "It doesn't suit you."

"I guess it's just- all I really want to do is stay right here, right now. Like, time blows. The best days -" he shivered with recent memories, how sheets and skin felt together, how Leon's eyes screwed his body, the contrast of midday sun on his chest and sanded boardwalk splinters digging into his shoulders, "-just, road trips... or when we stay in bed all day? I want more of them. Just – eating cold pizza and all the -"

"The take-out wrappers?"

"Gods, yeah. All abandoned from the night before. Nothing but music and sleeping and," he grinned, "sex and you. I've never had that before. And maybe that's the life you can keep. But, you know it, Leon, you know it's not going to be with me. I'm gonna have to work and support my mom and - maybe never do just what I want to do. But yeah, who really gets to do that?"

Leon opened his mouth, but the m was lost in Cloud's lips. It was unexpected and it was the end of the conversation. Cloud moved to straddle him, hardly believing he was doing this, in the fucking _mall_, anyway. It just felt like time was running away, out to drabber places, full of expectations and loss.

"People could walk past –"

Liking that, liking Leon anxious and protesting, even through a suggestive smile and fingers slipping into the hooks of his jeans.

"So?"

"I know a place."

"A place?"

"It's this – just come with me."

"If I didn't know better," Cloud said, "I'd think you'd done this before."

The Eastern exit, always a desolate end, Leon a difficult person to follow(_two stairs ahead)_, what with the leather sliding tight, one of his hands latched around Cloud's own, the gentle pulse of blood, stirring a little. It was a door that nobody would ever have noticed. Cloud saw handle, a sudden hollow, and they were detached, hidden and tumbling into the darkness together.

"Are you sure we should -?"

A deserted janitor's closet, something hilariously dirty about that. They laughed through kisses, dust dancing in the bands of light slipping through a filthy window overhead. A wasp hummed lazily at the pane, but the noise was easy to ignore with Leon's hands slipping below his waistband, tangling with the pale hair there. Cloud arched back against the wall, knocked a broom aside. He reached for something to grasp, squeezed nitrogen, clutched Leon's hair and pushed him down.

"Whose idea was it?" Leon muttered. He dropped to his knees, smirked upwards. "I could have waited."

Cloud could hear people talking through the walls, bad music blasting out of some toyshop, all of those people out shopping, oblivious to them, not even knowing. Savage thrills shot to his throat, half-wanting to be caught, half-hoping. He opened one eye. There was a poster peeling from one wall. _Get yourself clean with Mr. Sheen. _Cloud started to laugh again, almost hysterical through the pleasure. He shut his eyes, tried to keep quiet, tried not to move, not to show Leon how much he was enjoying this.

Even through tight lids, the sudden wash of light shot through. Flickering lashes to stunned navy. The janitor had always thought men only fucked other men on the television. All he saw was a curve of immaculate stomach, the blond beginning to blush furiously through his laughter as the other drew his jeans zip up with his teeth, steadily rose to his feet. His expression was impossibly serene.

"Sorry," Leon said. "We thought it was disused."

---

"I think stopping there could have been, y'know, a health risk."

Leon smiled behind his sunglasses, but didn't reply.

Cloud rolled the window down as far as it would go. People always expected Leon to drive so fast, but he sat on the limit, so that only a breeze crept through. It smelt of strawberry ice cream, of the last lawn-mow of summer, of barbecues and cheap beer. The streets were strangely quiet, just a couple of joggers and kids playing Tig into the road. The silver metallic was warm when Cloud rested his hand outside. He would have liked some music to remember to, but the radio, the broken radio had been a pretty good price to pay.

He was almost disappointed when the rumble of engine ceased. But then he and Leon looked at one another, laughed in synchrony, were fumbling before they reached the door.

---

"Whoever would have thought it? Us, turning out like this? Together."

Ripples of laugher moved across Leon's body, across the bed to where Cloud was lying, eyes half closed, lashes heavy beneath the sunlight. Basking in this strange happiness he doubted he'd ever get used to. His shirt was on the floor and he got that familiar little rush under scrutiny, Leon's eyes running over his figure, hands trying not to move. Their game; who'd be the first to give in, to close the space. Cloud usually lost.

"I'm still not used to the fact that you can actually smile."

"Fuck you, Cloud."(_hey, fuck you, Leon_.)

There were so many retorts, but they both just kept still, watching one another, Cloud laughing a little. Ribs shifted below faultless golden skin, jeans low enough for his hips to protrude. Frustration was eating him away, but he was too comfortable to shift, just sprawled, smiling. Leon squirmed and leant over to break it, slid his tongue lazily into the blond's mouth, felt the grin begin to fade.

Cloud usually lost, but not today.

Leon laid his hand flat where tan went white, the base of Cloud's stomach, slid his fingers lower and moved over the blond. Hearts reverberated closer to one another and Leon's mouth moved against his neck and Cloud squirmed as the skin there began to darken. He liked himself dominated and twisting, Leon beginning to know everything, every reaction of what he induced before he did it. Leon peeled out of leather, nudged Cloud's jeans back open and down.

"I don't like the having to wait," Leon whispered.

_And I don't like the feeling our time trickling away._

Cloud smiled, moved onto his front achingly slowly. Leon knelt, dug his fingertips into the softer skin between ribcage and pelvis, almost wanting it to bruise, wanting to leave Cloud with scars of himself, an aggressive tenderness he had never been able to hide.

_It always starts physical, starts a joke, and then we fall to all of this, and you still wonder if the tears are just sensation._

It didn't hurt anymore, and if it did, it was more like a distraction from something better, more real like this, Leon's breath rushing against his shoulder, impossible to keep his eyes open. He could see the corner of a plastic bag, the one with Leon's present, the one with the chain in it. When he looked over his shoulder, the brunet was kneeling there, hair filmed against his face, ribs pressing out, lips curled. He was the colour of coffee, radiating heat and moving with a hard rhythm. Cloud closed his eyes and pressed his face into cotton. He muttered things, and Leon went faster, the irregular motions, the moaning before he came. Like the pictures in that shop full of leather and black, he forgot where he ended and he began, because the spaces in between were just fine sweat and motion and noise. Leon withdrew with a desperate gasp at the last friction, the only hint of pleasure betrayed by his throat, leaving Cloud squirming there, alone.

"Don't... don't you.... Fuck, Leon...!"

Cloud turned over to face him, and Leon was back, hands pinning into the slender hollows of the blond's thighs, intent unreadable beneath the shadow and sensation.

"You really think I would?"

Cloud teetered there, his world heaving, just long enough for the feeling of Leon's mouth enclosed around him before he came. Came into warmth and damp, shouted Leon's name twice, bucking against him. Pause. Just the breathing in and out and in and out. Semen and sweat in the next kiss, when Leon dragged himself up Cloud's body, their ribcages defined and heaving, sliding together.

"Taste yourself," Leon muttered. He closed heavy lids and let his limbs begin to relax, one by one, breathing into the pillow, stopping his shaking. Cloud's eyes were liquid pleasure. He wrapped a hand around Leon's back and separated dark strands of hair, rough and sticky together. Time could freeze here, ok. That was what Cloud thought, what he'd always remember thinking. Time could freeze here.

Only it didn't.

* * *

Goddamn, that mall janitor's a lucky guy. 

Sora's radio DJ's playing The Eels – Mr E's Beautiful Blues.

Thanks for reading. I love hearing what people think, criticism and all, so please drop a review! - Abs


	4. 3, Nobody's Perfect

Yaoi. Theme of suicide. A little angst.

**Degrees of Separation – 3 – Nobody's Perfect**

"So you just wait around to die?" Riku asked.

"I had to go somewhere," said Riku.

Riku said, "Everybody should have something to miss."

Time rolled to a damp, bright drum. Sora walked home kicking leaves in his wake, kicking them harder, thinking of Kairi's responses, Kairi touching Riku like she didn't even know she was doing it, and Riku's smile. Riku's smile was always towards Sora, and he never had any idea what it was supposed to mean.

"You notice the way the new kid's hanging with Kai?"

Tidus' optimism crunched into a frown, like he was trying to be kind, but really, some things just had to be said. Tidus had whispered it with one hand still linked to Selphie's, and something about that had just made Sora want to hit him as hard as he could. Of course, he didn't. He had shrugged, pouted and turned away.

"Hey… don't be like that. Don't shoot the messenger."

"It's just a fad," Selphie, now, brimming with false reassurance. "Sure, he's cute… that whole mysterious thing. But it'll get old. Smile, Sora… remember that?"

_Smile._

A hundred histories contained in that one face, the smooth ease of youth combined with something Sora imagined it would be so easy to miss. Sometimes, when others were talking, when Riku was drifting, shadows crept under his eyes, highlighted the hollows, a darker beauty in cheekbones cut with past, eyes bluer in black. Sora wondered what movies played on the insides of Riku's lids, whether his stomach ever flinched at a memory.

"What was it like?" Tidus asked. "Where you used to live?"

Riku wasn't a fad, he was a fucking addiction, not just in his smile but the way he appeared silently, the way he told stories, jokes. There wasn't always humour, but there was always laughter, an audience not amused but vaguely obliged. Threatened. So much older. Sora waited for a slip in manner, at least a little information. Riku was a year older and he was perfect and Kairi never stopped speaking about him, so that even when Riku wasn't there, even then, speculation moulded a barrier, one slipping in between them, one with a lazy stride and fascinating eyes.

"Everything was neon or black. I knew some people for years without ever really seeing them once. You look back and it's like, all I see is lights and shapes and… it's sort of unreal. That's what it's like. Unreal. Nobody ever slept. And even when you did sleep… you dreamt."

Riku's monologues, and people would slow down as they passed, just to hear snippets of a different world, one they would later dissect amongst peers, imagine alone, when nobody could see them smiling. Kairi nodded for him to continue, and Sora wished more than anything that he could walk away. That these scraps of a different world weren't so achingly precious.

"The city. You had to drive out – we would drive out. Weekends we headed on road trips, to places nobody else knew existed. Not places like this. Houses alone, or lakes. This one lake. There was a platform right in the centre, maybe three quarters of a mile, more. And if you'd swum your way you had to engrave your name into the wood, add tallies every time. Dates from decades ago."

"How many times did you do it, Riku?"

Sora wondered if he would ever see a place like that, if he would carve his own initials, breathless and triumphant, Kairi with him, maybe, tan, rivulets of water evaporating from their bodies and into the sun.

"Seven."

"You should try for the Abes! Being a water baby and all."

That had been one of those times, when Riku almost folded in on himself. Tidus and Wakka had moved onto the next game, but Sora had stayed, stayed with Riku, intrigued but awkward. Maybe he was in the sun, on the platform, too. Sora shuddered a little just imagining Riku shirtless and golden, heaving himself out of the lake. There were decays of wings on his shoulder blades and he stretched and turned around and offered Sora his hand. Maybe they were on the platform together. Or maybe Riku was in a colder place.

Sora leant out of his bedroom window, listening to the rain in the night, falling invisible. Smiling without really realising it.

_What did you used to think about?_

_Kairi._

Sora still smiled. He smiled because despite it all, he liked Riku, couldn't deny it. Could bitch and angst, but nobody told tales like those. Nobody uprooted teachers and nobody kept him on his toes and nobody mocked Tidus and nobody strolled down the sacred drive and nobody made him think. Nobody but Riku.

_Kairi._

What made Sora ache was that he saw everything that Kairi did. He saw Riku's appeal in every possible way, and with it saw his own eventual, inevitable neglect. It would hurt, maybe, when their touches became open and exaggerated, when Kairi sat him down and said she was sorry, gods, she was sorry, but this is it. It would hurt, but it would be more like a numbness, a bracing of acceptance for something that had already happened.

_Who are you going to miss? Really?_

Sora wondered if Riku often went to the library. The school was big, and every corridor looked the same, a labyrinth of white plastic and punctured glass, and there were lunchtimes when Riku couldn't(_wouldn't_) be found. Sora imagined him, then, leafing through the shelves for a few more ideals, a few more surprises. He never suggested the library to Kairi, not even when she was frantic, when she _had_ to tell Riku something. Maybe because he didn't want to feel that slab of disappointment when she shook her head, bemused, and told him the library was out of bounds. Maybe because, in his head, it was already his and Riku's place, and theirs alone.

_Stupid, stupid. Just fucking **sleep**._

Riku watched him. Sometimes Sora would feel the spiky pressure of scrutiny. He was never quite quick enough to catch him out, but occasionally, Riku would still be struggling to flatten a furtive little smile, shaking his bangs, bottom lip slightly drawn beneath his teeth.

_Sleep._

Four a.m. was the deadest time. Stoic shadows cluttered out of the streetlamps and the silence had bled to a nasty, high-pitched whine. There was no difference between having his eyes closed and open. Sheets on and sweating, off and shivering with vulnerability.

_And dream._

He tore himself away from the rain. He dug his face into the pillow and groaned, beyond tired and only a fierce frustration, faces dancing in and out of the darkness until they were lights. The music began quietly, a whisper of beat. Sora could hear it, beyond his bedroom door. Groggy and trembling, his feet brushed the carpet and he stood. The room was twisting on an axis, and every time his eyes focused, it twisted again. All these everyday objects - radio, junior trophies, photographs - dilating and compressing and bursting into two. The door was already parted, which was crazy, because it was always closed, couldn't sleep with it open, never could. He pulled it further apart.

And of course, Decay was beyond. The floor in replace of his home, the hallway gone. That wasn't what surprised Sora. What surprised him was that this time, Riku wasn't dancing. He was still, and shirtless, and faced away, and the spotlight upon him seemed intrusive, almost, unworthy.

"You're perfect."

There was freedom in Decay, like the moment he breathed that rainbow stained smoke-air, truths came out. Not force, just that delicious freedom.

"Nobody's perfect."

Riku looked sad, looked like he did when he thought nobody was watching, looked like perfection could be a burden, maybe the weight of it keeping him static. "But you. I could care. Aren't you dying, Sora? Dying here?"

"Why aren't you -?"

"Dancing?" one pale, sculptured arm stretched out, hand open. "Come with me. Come dance with me, Sora."

Sora was going to say, _Of course_. He was going to ask Riku to take him to the platform. He was going to be saved from predictability, saved from this town. He was seconds away, Riku's palm within grasp, and the future that lay there, lines deep and scrawled with excitement, adventures, mystery. He could feel the warmth, hear the music rising. And then, his name – choked, from behind, back in a room small enough to carry a whole, sad seventeen years, and a girl curled on his bed and sobbing and sobbing and wanting desperately for somebody to look back at her.

Kairi was always younger in his dreams, like a little part of his mind refused to see further than friends, ignored the years of lovers. She was always young, and alone, and Sora never had been able to ignore her. His conscience maybe a little mocking, here. Even in sleep, committed and tied and guilty for nothing at all.

Sora stumbled over cigarette packets, couldn't face Riku, dived back into his bedroom, stumbled onto the bed, pulled Kairi towards him. Self-hatred exploded in his stomach, Kairi strangely cold, his body longing for the heat of revolution, and such a sad, small revolution, to take Riku's hand.

"Stay here, with me. Sora, stay…"

"You were the one who wanted to go," he whispered. "And we did…"

"No… I don't want him. I want you. We're perfect."

She leant to kiss him, hands covering his eyes.

"We are perfect."

_(Nobody's perfect_.)

"Nobody's perfect."

Sora thought for a moment that he had said it, but the hands parted and they weren't Kairi's, they were Riku's, it was Riku, Riku with a triumphant grin, Riku here for a little redemption, and Sora didn't risk the second thought, breathed with relief and hungrily fumbled for lips, for contact, kissed Riku as good as it could ever have been, found skin, but reality was fumbling, too, the jut of Riku's hip and smooth, white stomach and change -

Sora jerked awake, tumbled back into life. He was shuddering and his hair was plastered down with perspiration. He moved and felt the damp of semen on his lower stomach, thighs. If he looked down, he thought that he would be able to see his heart beating. He sat up, drew his knees to his chest, aches of confusion and need, hating the reminding, having to remind himself that Riku was just a new friend, somebody who maybe liked Kairi, somebody who Kairi loved, somebody who rarely acknowledged his existence. He squeezed his eyes shut, rocking, trying to get back inside of his mind, where he would look across the bed and see the knowing glow of aqua amongst the darkness. The oblivion of sleep or the deceit of dream. Neither obliged, and he was still cold and awake, watching miniscule digital numbers strike his chances away.

Still. He carried the night with only a desperate hope in the not knowing, the imagining, that maybe Riku was lying miles away, or strolling down Decay, or within the realm of his own dreams, thinking of him, hoping the same.

---

The black letters seeped into a sluggish mush of grey. Sora could almost feel the muscles in his eyes struggling to contract amongst grit and exhaustion. But Decay was a little like his name. It dragged him out of neutral and into inquisitive.

**CLUB TO BLAME FOR LOCAL CHAOS**

_Recent outbursts of petty crime and vandalism have been traced to a renowned nightclub on the outskirts of Destiny. These acts are said to have been undergoing for around a month, and have included the smashing of car windows, graffiti of homes and destruction of council property. The Mayor has condemned them as 'pointless and violent', whilst Constable Palmer took a sterner take on matters yesterday._

"_Decay attracts vicious youngsters from out of town," he claimed. "Once again, this youth club has drawn crime into our community. The solution seems to me painfully obvious." _

_Indeed, this is not the first time that Decay has been linked with the criminal underworld. Two years earlier, a boom of drug abuse was traced back to the club, which stands on the coastal side of Canech St. Several local teenagers were admitted to Rehabilitation units at Destiny General. A petition by local parents to close the club failed only amongst rumours of threat and bribery._

"_It is never too late to try again," said Jecht Anoru, 43, whose shop windows were smashed last night. "We'll definitely try another petition. I don't know one parent who wants that place corrupting our kids any longer." _

_Last year, Destiny was hailed as one of the country's 'Safest Places to Live' in a national enquiry._

"Still not sleeping, sweetie?"

Sora's mother had a frail, wasted beauty, and she was always in a rush, always meaning to be somewhere else. He saw her this morning through jaded, heavy eyes, and he was tired, and she was concerned.

"You want to talk about it?"

Sora smiled, not his insanely infectious, genuine smile, but enough. "It's just a phase, I reckon."

Her hand moved cool across his forehead, and he missed days when his problems were all small enough to be solved. His parents had always told him that, told it like a mantra; _Share it, and we'll solve it_. He imagined putting his fork down, telling his mother that he was infatuated with a guy who could be stealing Kairi away from him, that he was sick of this town, sick of school, sick of routine. That he dreamt about Riku and feverish freedom and change. The words would be wrong in this kitchen, at a normal breakfast time. They were too big. His mother would faint or call the doctor, and it was too early to deal with either prospect.

"It's nothing."

His mother nodded, sipped her coffee, cradled it between her hands. Turned away.

---

"So my dad heard this great _SMASH_ and he starts up, ok? And he was looking for his bat and everything, my mom's practically in tears, thinking we're going to all be murdered in our sleep… So my dad started moving down the stairs, straight out of an action picture or something… holding the bat…"

"Your dad keeps a bat?"

Tidus threw Riku a look.

"In this town?"

"He thinks it's better to be safe than sorry. After all the shit that went down, a few years back. You wouldn't know."

Riku's eyebrows flashed above his hairline for an instant. His eyes mingled silently with Sora's, and they glinted a little. Tidus, once he got started. _Gods_.

"So he's ready to _pound_ this guy. I mean, seriously. But there was nobody there. They'd gone off, musta ran, because he was down there in a second. None of the stuff from the shop had even gone. Just every window, totally broken in. It's a mess. It's such a mess, right now. But the council are going to do it for free, or something. Like, they feel it's their responsibility."

"You think they're going to close Decay?"

Maybe everybody was a bad liar when you knew they weren't telling the truth. A pale blush crept up Kairi's cheeks and spread, an interesting contrast to the auburn hair. Even her ears tinged pinker. Sora looked away. He'd seen the face before, seven, when his teacher impressions made her laugh so hard she wet herself. Twelve, the day Selphie stood up in class and announced Sora and Kairi were _going **steady**_. Seventeen. The day she told him she loved him, and his response had wavered, words clogging with uncertainty in the back of his throat.

"Where are we supposed to go out, when we're older, if they close the one club…?"

"Hey," said Riku. "Hey Tidus, where were _you_? Last night?"

The blond squirmed momentarily. There was something deeper than embarrassment in his expression. Maybe dislike, or shame.

"I was – ok, I'll admit it, I heard the noise, I stayed in bed," to Selphie's giggle, "Oh, so you'd have been leading the counter attack? Bat in hand? It was pretty creepy, y'know… Selph, quit it… ok? _Selphie_!"

He chased her down corridor, waving a textbook at her ass, running just slowly enough not to catch her. Kairi sighed, turned to follow them.

"English. Catch you later."

A lonely sky stretched out above them, speckled with gulls and leaves taking flight. Riku's blazer was slipping from his shoulders, hair ruffled in the wind. His face was tinged with the cold, the white pronouncing his eyes, which softened when he looked towards Sora. They were sat on the steps, kids running inside to reach their lessons. Even when Riku moved quickly, he made it look lazy and careless. He moved himself up and grinned back down.

"It's got to be said, Sora… you look wasted."

Riku dragged him up to standing. It was easy to take that hand now, in the daylight, when change was merely a dream, and the racket of routine enveloped them whole.

"I didn't sleep so hot."

Riku cocked an eyebrow. Riku laughed. Riku touched his shoulder.

"Then you're going to bed too early."

* * *

Cloud was lying still, making silent pacts to himself, singing love songs, another ship upon the sea of sweet confusion, because I'm never going to be a smug lover, never going to take these things for granted, these lines of lightning mean we're never alone, never alone, no no. 

People would look in and it would be strange and maybe beautiful. Not perfect. Perfect was saccharine love on TV-shows, where happily ever after was the credit roll, and people said things like, "I love you," and "Let's buy a house in the country. We can have horses, and seven children." And though the thought of Leon in a cowboy outfit, with a cocked hat and spurs, was pretty appealing, perfect was not them.

They were about grey, about nights licked with sweat and submission, about feeling alive, about silence, about glances. Cloud figured they could sometimes look hostile, sitting across a table from one another, not speaking. "You're deep," he muttered to Leon. "But you hide it well."

This romance was shredded to long drives in Leon's convertible, Cloud trying to count the white markings in the road, trying to keep track of the miles they made together. Leon hated the city. He was made for desert, for bowls of stars. He was made for sleeping roadside. He was made for a dirty tan and scarred hands.

"It must have a name," Cloud said. They were overlooking the lake again, slumped together on the bonnet. Cloud skimmed a fingernail over the silver metal and frowned. "Don't you think it should have a name, Leon?"

"It's already got one."

"Oh yeah? What is it?"

Leon gave a sheepish shrug. "It's stupid. You'll just laugh."

"What? The Pussy Mobile? No, wait… The Dick Mobile?"

"You really are shockingly funny."

"Cockvertible?"

Cloud was laughing so hard he could hardly speak, more at Leon's expression than his own suggestions.

"Fine… _fine_. It's called Griever."

"Griever."

Griever framed Cloud's weeks, roared outside his house most mornings with the promise of some new sprawling road trip. They swam out to the board twice, added tallies to their names. They wore their matching sunglasses. They hiked through forest and camped out one night and fucked in Leon's little orange tent, which crumpled around them when it got good. They watched thunder and lightning slash over the city, let the summer rain enclose their bodies, let the sun darken them. In the hottest August they lay naked together on Griever's backseat, ferociously happy but never content, and they didn't look back once.

---

Leon was still Leon. Quietly infatuated, perhaps, but still Leon. He still went out alone in the hours just before dawn. The loneliness he couldn't shake. There was something farcical about it, him standing cold and apart in some blue club when the place he wanted to be was bed, Cloud, warmth. A reminder of the world which, a few months before, had been his own. A little masochistic reminder of how lucky he was.

The silk electronic paused for a moment and Leon downed the remainder of his drink. It was dyed blue and the music had dulled all of his senses but hearing. Everything blue. One of the few places where his eyes were not shocking. They blended.

"Still out late."

Leon wasn't so practised at keeping shock out of his expression as upset, but he managed it.

"Shit, Riku… hi."

Riku's anorexic beauty was accentuated in this cold blue light. His face was swollen with shadow, body sickeningly carved, carved by the bone. He looked like a corpse on display, perfectly embalmed, but still lifeless. Still dead.

"Leon," Riku said.

"How are you?"

"I'm good," said Riku, and when he smiled, it was the parody of a smile, all deceived by the stillness in his eyes, a little like an ocean with a thousand screaming currents beneath. "I'm pretty good."

Leon wondered vaguely how he had ever used this boy, so tragic and pale and so young, so fucking young. He could usually convince himself to let things go, let guilt slip him by. Not this time. He was about to say it, about to apologise, had the words all planned out. _I just never realised that you really thought we were serious. I wouldn't have treated you the way I did, if I had known. We could never have slotted. I just wish you could have told me. In that regard, you were right. We're just too similar._

That similarity, which made apology an impossibility. That, and Riku's next words.

"So how's _Cloud_?"

It seemed such a cliché that Leon almost wanted to laugh; the spite behind the word, spitting it out like a shattered tooth, like bile.

"He's wonderful," Leon said, taking his time, basking in the triumph, all pity dissolving. He couldn't stand that, how Riku was acting as though this was Cloud, Cloud's doing. He could shout the words here, over the music, shout them out (_just for you_).

"I'm glad for you, Leon. I'm really glad."

"You didn't sound so glad last week. On the _phone_…!"

Below the belt. Those were the words that would haunt Leon, the words that would revolve around his mind at night, in the long, lonely year to come. Those were the words he would never be able to share, the base of his own shame and the catalyst for everything to come. He would wonder - if he'd held them back - if perhaps things could have been different. They wouldn't have been. But he'd wonder all the same. Some unwritten rule, that you should never refer to times of trust, times of weakness, to use against somebody. Unwritten. Leon needed a book. He needed these things scrawled down, in stone, because when the times came, he always forgot them.

Riku took a step away, sank further back into shadow.

"Maybe I'll be phoning you again, some time soon," he said.

And he was gone.

---

When Zack and Cloud were younger, much younger, they spent summers lakeside,together,their parents drinking and falling to stupor in the sun. Aeris couldn't come, of course, because she was a _girl_, and she was too pink for adventures, anyway. Cloud guessed that he wouldn't have minded he presence so much, because if Aeris came at least he wouldn't be the slowest, or the stupidest, or the one that could let Zack down.

Some summer.

"I've got something to show you," Zack said.

They picked their path away from the adults, away from the college kids sprawled out, splashing one another and drinking beer. It was a heavy day, and the clouds weighed them down. The air was too thick to run through, even for Zack, twenty metres ahead and singing a tune that had been on the radio on the way there. The humidity was making Cloud feel a little nauseous.

"Hey, hey… wait up."

He was blushing with the effort, hair practically white, then, eyes too big for his face. Zack scowled, but he waited, arms crossed, brows scrunched together.

"You gotta be faster. 'Cause otherwise they'll wonder where we've gone."

"And where _are _we going?"

With a wicked grin that would never mature, he turned around, kept moving, sliding on damp rocks and skidding over the sand.

"Aw, Zack…!"

"You're as bad as Aeris."

"Am not!"

It seemed they'd gone a hundred miles before reaching the cove. Cloud turned a rocky corner and Zack was there, beaming, one eyebrow cocked.

"What do you think?"

"Wow… I mean, how'd you find it?! It's – wow!"

It was a rowing boat, dirty and discoloured with age, a thick tie of rope slung besides it. There was a mossy green line around the woodwork where water stopped and air began, and tiny black letters painted delicately close to the rim.

"Eekalib-er?"

"Excalibur," Cloud whispered. He stepped closer, touched the frail wood. There were bottles tucked beneath the benches inside of the boat, bottles and a little brown rucksack. Cloud picked that out, pulled at the rusted zip. A map, and a torch which didn't work, and a little red diary, with all of the ink run grey across the pages.

"Same difference, slow coach."

"I think somebody had adventures in this boat," said Cloud. "And now we can't even read about them, 'cause all of their stories got wet."

"So we make our own," Zack said. "Vice Captain Strife. Our first job's to dig it out of the sand."

---

"It took us forever. And it was drizzling and all –"

Zack's laugh crackled down the line. "A labour of love. It was worth it, though, when it actually, like, floated. I don't know how it did that. You'd think it'd have rotted away, wouldn't you? But it was good as new."

"Whoever made it in the first place. They're the ones we owe, I guess. You know, I never stopped wondering," Cloud smiled, "what that diary would have said. Even now. Maybe two guys made it together. Or a dad, for his kid…"

"I never thought about it… always just think about, y'know, that night. When it got dark, and we were like, shit! Forgot the oars!"

"You kept our morale up, though, Captain," Cloud grinned and closed his eyes. "We were fine."

---

"We're gonna die out here," Cloud said.

It was too dark to see the lakeshore, now, and the drizzle was rain, casting distant lights blurry. There were cars, way over there, and all Cloud wished was that he was inside one of them, dry and safe. Water sloshed pleasantly against the wood, a parody of comfort. He could hear his heart slamming against his ribcage, and when Zack reached an arm out, he jumped about a mile.

"Shit, Cloud, don't worry. We'll be ok. They'll notice we're not there, and they'll send out motorboats. _Speed_ ones. We'll get to go back on a speed boat, I'm telling you right now."

It had taken them nearly an hour to drag the boat to the edge of the lake, through a marshy course of sand and grass. They'd been so excited to feel it floating that Zack had given one mighty heave and – away. It was ten minutes before Cloud noticed the current.

And a problem.

They had forgotten to bring oars.

Zack wrapped an arm around him, so that they could shiver in synchrony. Water droplets were hanging from Cloud's hair and lashes, and his eyes were luminous in the dark. He was so scrawny, Zack thought. He couldn't imagine Cloud ever really growing up.

"It'll be good training," Zack said, "for when we're in the army. If you even go, being a brainiac and all. You'll probably go and be, like, a brainiac."

"No way. I'll be with you."

"We need us some smokes," Zack said. "And a good story. You know some stories, right, Vice Captain?"

"So, once upon an island," Cloud said. He stopped a second, rubbed his hands together. "I'm gonna freeze, Zack."

Zack was just a blob of softer darkness, but Cloud couldn't deny that there was something nice and heroic about it, the two of them alone and in danger and surviving on one another. For the fear, he wouldn't have minded staying.

"Once upon an island…?"

A feeling started in his stomach, grappling closer to something warm and moving. He would never have guessed, that the feeling would stay with him for the next eight years, nine.

"There were two boys," Cloud murmured. "Two boys, and a girl. But they were bored of their island. So they built a raft –"

The rescue workers, in their speedboat, found the two boys at dawn, cold and wet, and snuggled together amongst the ropes and bottles.

---

"I always thought that if I'd have been on my own that night, I'd probably have died. I'd have had, like, a heart attack, or a nervous breakdown."

"Same. If I hadn't been so busy making sure you were ok, I may have actually thought about it – being on a little boat, in the middle of nowhere. If it wasn't for your story…"

"We should head out there soon, y'know. What even happened to the boat? Leon and me have been up a few times recently, but I've never seen it, not a sign."

"That's – that's sort of what I want to talk to you about. Leon."

The line froze over. Zack could see Cloud, jaw clenched, and hurt seeping in to his expression. This was the job Zack had adopted. Cloud was too naïve, a reckless naivety opening him whole for use and ridicule. If saving meant hurting, then so be it. Zack couldn't remember a time he hadn't known Cloud, and facing his resentment was one thing, but seeing him broken by that leathery bastard, well, that was something different.

Zack tripped over the words as they came out, knew that his spotlight was timed.

"I know we've been through this before. It's just… look. I know you care. I know you care for him, but haven't you noticed? He's a loner. People are scared of him, Cloud. There must be something that makes people be that. I always looked out for you. On the boat -"

"What's that boat got to do with Leon? That was nine years ago. What are you even _talking_ about?"

"I'm talking about caring for you. Did then, do now."

"So you fed me that memory for what? Guilt trip, or loyalty? That you protected me through that night on the boat, and now you're doing the same?! We were on that boat because you found it. Because you dragged me with you. And why am I with Leon, in the first place?"

(_the feeling would stay with him for the next eight years_)

"How can you even start to say that's –"

(_nine_)

"Nothing hurts more than wanting something you know you will never get."

Zack thought of how Cloud had used to look at him. There had been moments when he burnt under scrutiny, and it was always the blond, gazing across as if he didn't even realise he was doing it. As if Zack was the horizon, as if there was something more, as if there was something worth seeing. _Daydreaming again, kid? _

"It's funny…"

_About things I couldn't say if I wanted to. And there were times when I did._

"It's funny," said Zack, "that you try to give somebody everything, but all they want is the one thing… one thing you can't give them."

"Being with Leon makes me happy. It makes me feel like I don't most of the time. Makes me feel like somebody different. Somebody you'd like to know."

"You've always been somebody I've liked to know. You don't need him to be that. Dishonourable discharge… that scar. He's so lonely, Cloud. He'll make you lonely, too. You've just drifted away. I haven't see you. Aerith worries, I worry. He's hurt other people, and he's older and –"

"It's him I'm meeting him on Saturday," Cloud said, revelling in (_only real way of getting rid of hurt I know is to pass it on. Weight you can never put down only transfer_) the words. "I meant to say. Won't be making the barbecue."

"However hard you try and make me hate you, you know I'm worrying for –"

"When are you going to realise that I can live without you?"

Zack stopped speaking. He could feel blood hammering into his skull, and for all of that oxygen, couldn't think of a single thing to say.

"You don't even know who I am anymore," Cloud whispered.

"No," Zack said. "But do you?"

The strangest thing about telephone calls is that all the time, you're alone.

Cloud slammed the receiver down, fumbled for something to destroy. The nearest thing, blackness on his bedside cabinet, mirrors, you alone. Leon's gift. Sunglasses.

They shot in a thin arc across his bedroom, smashing against the opposite wall into two neat halves. This room was so fucking juvenile, so pathetic. It reeked of years of longing and friendship, and a quiet, subdued blond boy rocked in the corner, scared to talk for the fear he'd say something wrong. Scared to move for the fear he'd stumble.

(_Shit, Cloud, don't worry. We'll be ok._)

When Cloud retrieved the shattered glasses he saw that one of the lenses had splintered into little shards on the carpet. He gathered them into his palm, on his knees, and once he was down there he stayed a while, trembling with anger and loss. The blond kid was still there, crouched in his mind, glaring with sullen defiance. Secrets. He knew exactly who he was.

* * *

Thanks - daea, babymar-mar, Holstein, night deluxe, Praetor, Rachel D.M. 

I love CloudxZack. I'm sorry. I can't keep it out.

Reviews are completely inspiring, so please feed the button.


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